Reflecting Critically on the Political Psyche: Therapy, Testament and Trouble in Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis

With passion and originality, within this new book, Samuels presents powerful material on culture and politics (including a critical take on political violence) and a compassionate account of the role of an individual when it comes to progressive politics.

Initial chapters include his commentary on Edward Albee’s shocking play The Goat and a provocative and critical view on liberal idealisation of ’the Other’. Then, there is more of Samuels’ celebrated work bringing therapy thinking to bear on politics, and as far as the practice and organisation of therapy is concerned, readers will find new work on how to organise a good training (you must use pluralism) and a robust account of what a critical psychotherapy might look like. A section on Jungian matters includes Samuels’ work on Jung and ’Africans’, whose importance has long been recognised, and a scintillating ’balance sheet’ for Jungian analysis, setting its strengths and weaknesses alongside each other. In a clinical section, Samuels shows us what he means by the dynamic idea of the ’activist client’.

With each chapter being preceded by a special ’retrospective introduction’, as well as including experiential exercises to ground the ideas, this unique collection of papers will be of interest to psychotherapists, Jungian analysts, psychoanalysts, and counsellors, as well as academics working in those fields.

Andrew Samuels has made notable contributions to psychotherapy, Jungian analysis and studies, and psychoanalysis for over fifty years. He is a relational Jungian psychoanalyst, professor, activist and political consultant (including to Britain’s National Health Service). He founded or co-founded many organisations within the ’psy’ field, including Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility and Analysis and Activism. His books include Jung and the Post-Jungians and The Political Psyche.